People are getting worried about self-driving cars, especially after hearing that a company called Cruise might have not been honest about a crash in San Francisco where a person got hurt. This has made some folks wonder if California needs new rules and more people watching over the quick growth of this technology.
In California, many self-driving cars are being tested on regular streets, even though some folks are worried about how safe they are. It’s also unclear how police can deal with these cars if they break traffic laws.
The people who make self-driving cars say they need to keep driving them a lot to make them better and safer. But Raicu mentioned that most of this testing happens on busy city streets where there are people walking and driving, and we still don’t know a lot about how these cars work in those situations.
These driverless cars have been seen breaking traffic rules, like running red lights or getting in the way of emergency vehicles.
But even when these cars do something wrong, it’s hard for the police to do anything about it in California. They can only give a ticket if there’s a person in the car who can take responsibility.
A memo from the chief of police in San Francisco says that officers can’t give tickets to driverless cars for moving violations. The chief mentioned that technology changes quickly, sometimes faster than the laws can keep up.
While these cars have gotten parking tickets, it seems like they can’t be given tickets for breaking traffic laws.
“I think this shows that it’s not fair for everyone,” said Michael Stephenson, a lawyer who specializes in helping cyclists in accidents. He thinks that California needs new laws to handle these new kinds of cars.
“It feels like we’re trying to fit a square into a circle,” he said. “We’re still figuring out how to deal with driverless cars.”
